Page 2133 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 21 June 2011
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Ginninderra high closed six months after that promise was given and we all know the ongoing angst in the community over the closure of the Flynn primary school.
Regrettably, her style and approach have been well replicated in the new Deputy Chief Minister as well. He too is a denier. He too blames his department for his lack of courage and leadership. He too, in the absence of fact, resorts to personal slanging. His tabling in the Assembly in 2009 of a document he had circulated widely, entirely misrepresenting myself and the Liberal Party, brought no apology and no revised or improved ways in looking to lessons from history.
For this open approach the Chief Minister plans to take there can be no better guide to the likely tenor of this new-age philosophy than that of her predecessor and mentor, Jon Stanhope. He published a wonderful work of literature, a code of good government, in 2001. Chief Minister, good government also requires a strong ministerial code of conduct. Ministerial responsibility is paramount to open government. Jon Stanhope’s code for good conduct or code for good government made a lot of us think about the excuse for thinking that the document that Jon Stanhope originally put forward got lost or left on a dusty shelf somewhere. But it does contain some great gems of advice and direction. However, it is advice or direction that have not been followed.
Jon Stanhope delivered this code of good government in an address to a Labor leaders breakfast in Canberra in March 2001. At the breakfast, he spoke of the malaise in the Australian political and social landscape. He suggested that words like “disenchantment”, “distrust”, “anger” and “frustration” were commonplace descriptions of the political process.
One could be excused for thinking that he was foreshadowing what the ACT electorate would be feeling after a decade of Labor mismanagement. The document talks of Labor’s core values of fairness, openness, responsibility, and I quote: “And they are qualities that will characterise a Stanhope Labor government. We will ensure question time is treated with respect. Under Labor there will be no avoidance of questions, no diatribes in response to questions.”
Really? He went on to say, “Labor believes that responsible governments are open and accountable.” And further: “But we also understand that it is impossible to rebuild and maintain the community’s confidence in government and public institutions unless the business of those institutions is conducted in the most open manner possible. Labor will not hide behind a cloak of confidentiality. Labor does not have core and non-core promises. What we say is carefully considered and realistically judged. We will stand by what we say.”
That was in 2001 and by any account we have not had good government. We have not had sound economic management. We certainly have not had open process. We have not had direct and open answers, free of diatribe or personal attack, when we dare to hold the government accountable on issues that Labor is saying should be the case.
Like our Prime Minister, you, Chief Minister, cannot just blame your predecessor for these omissions of open government. You were part of the team as Deputy Chief Minister. So we have a pattern of conflict and confusion and incredible public waste.
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